The funny thing about living is that everyone thinks that they are living in the most modern of times. It's only obvious until your really stop to think about it.
By the close of the nineteenth century, the idea that one could expect things to get better seems like it had caught hold. Things were being invented , discovered and appreciated by wealthy and/or very lucky people.
There might have been the hope injustices that had been otherwise resolved would get better. But day to day life was still mostly dark, dirty, smelly and painful for nearly everyone.
When you start your day everyday by going to the bathroom in a bucket, or in a hole in the boards covering a pit filled with excrement like nearly everyone did in 1891, the world is bound to look differently.
In the fog of decades, centuries, and millenia, it's easy to overlook that those people only knew of their experience and a bit of what had gone on before them.
It's seems that the further back one goes in time, the greater the number of people there were that had no idea of what happened a thousand, a hundred or even fifty years prior.
To be certain there is an enormous amount of people living today that don't know much about what happened on the world's stage before their lifespans or during their lifespans, but as a percentage of the total that number must be smaller.
But I don't know if knowing all that just gives you something to think about while your waiting in line.
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